Or did I? I resent the common vernacular that I took and you lost your virginity, the implication that it was solely a one-way transaction. I mean, you had it, then I had it, and now it’s around here somewhere…

These terms are misleading and simplistic, anyway. It’s usually considered desirable to lose one’s virginity, yet the “taker” is depicted as culpable and cunning — the grim reaper of your own personal Age of Innocence. My actions were not manipulative or deceitful. It’s not my fault we’re not soul mates; that we will never tell a PG-13 version of our story to the kids that will never exist.

I felt it slipping through my fingers the moment you handed it to me. The word elusive comes to mind, but I suspect I could’ve held on to it if I had really tried. You should be more careful with your possessions.

“I suspect” — there I go, absent-mindedly conjuring the language of victimization. “Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, if you’ll observe Exhibit A. Here we find a torn condom wrapper outlined in chalk, marking the very spot where the purity of a formerly chaste soul expired in a shallow puddle of prophylactic lubricant…”

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If you’re desperate enough, you could go around staple-gunning “Missing: My Virginity” (“no tags, answers to Muffin”) signs to telephone poles, but it probably won’t do you any good. Because I’m pretty sure it’s around here somewhere, in my apartment. It’s kind of a mess in here right now.

Is that it under that old pizza box on the loveseat over there? No, that’s not it. That’s the September 1998 issue of Sports Illustrated for Kids, isn’t it? Well I’ve been looking for that, too. So that’s pretty serendipitous.

And I know you think this would be easier if I cared more — you’re right, it would.

But what you fail to acknowledge is that what you’re looking for is not within me. In its place, there’s a giant empty nothingness — an immortal, wordless void. You are barking up the wrong tree; no one’s home, stop ringing the doorbell.

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You know how they say that when you have sex with somebody, you’re also having sex with everyone they’ve ever had sex with? Maybe a little bit of your essence trickled down to all of them, everyone I’ve ever been with, like a reverse food chain. That’s kind of romantic, when you think about it.

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Have you thought about putting an ad for it on a milk carton? Like a “Have You Seen My Virginity?” thing? They have that amazing technology now where they can take the last remaining picture of someone and artificially age it to get an approximation of what the person would be expected to look like presently. Maybe they could do that with your virginity. Like, here’s what we think your virginity would look like if it still existed: Here’s what to look for.

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Merriam-Webster defines the noun “stand” as “a halt for defense or resistance,” but this is not a healthy or productive way to characterize the “stand” in our one-night stand. Okay?

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You get fucked. We have sex. You make love. Are these terms representative of a dramatic difference in the act itself, or mere grammatical choices?

Point being, your virginity: I lost it, you lost it — somebody lost it. Don’t put too much stock in the parlance, babe. The point is it’s gone now.